First link between climate patterns and civil conflict

First off, I'm not exactly sure this topic can directly be affiliated with this subforum's usual material. However, I'm certain it can be linked and angled to the topics normally discussed, and hopefully be of use to the conspiracy theorists that frequent these forums. This is why I decided to bring this up here. That said, let's get to it.

The article this thread is based on, starts with proposing an interesting question, but bear in mind, the scientists have no idea to what the answer might be:

The Peruvian highlands were hit hard by El Niño in 1982, and crops were destroyed. The same year, guerrilla attacks by the Shining Path movement erupted into a civil war that would last 20 years. Random coincidence? Possibly not.

A recent study seems to show a link between between global climate patterns and civil conflict, and the article proposes that it puts El Niño on par with factors like poverty and social exclusion. Sounds pretty darn serious to me..

Solomon Hsiang, a researcher in international affairs at Princeton University, and colleagues looked at data on conflicts between 1950 and 2004 that killed more than 25 people in a year. They compared El Niño years, which happen roughly every five years, with La Niña years. El Niño tends to bring hotter, drier conditions - and La Niña cooler ones - to tropical countries (...)

The analysis included 175 countries and 234 conflicts, more than half of which resulted in over a thousand deaths. Furthermore the analysis found that...

the risk of conflict in tropical countries rose from 3 per cent during La Niña years to 6 per cent during El Niño years. The effect was absent from countries only weakly affected by these climate cycles.

That means that the risk doubled.

But as Andrew Solow of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts points out, "People do not start wars simply because they are hot." And until we know what it is about El Niño that increases the likelihood of conflict, it will be impossible to say whether this means we should expect more unrest due to climate change.

The researchers seem to have no clue as to why this is. So you're apparently left to draw the conclusions as to why this happens on your own. Can it have something to do with the supposed chemtrails? HAARP? Or can it really be credited to something as normal as drought and heat?

I hope you found this to be interesting, and that it will help contribute to your research.

You can read the entire article here. URL: Source Article

I'd guess it has something to do with natural disasters causing a lot of stress on citizens, destroying homes and infrastructure, etc. Hard times usually precede conflict. Why you would try to blame HAARP or some kind of "geo-engineering" for this is beyond my comprehension.

There have been meany cases where climate is suspected of causing conflict - eg changes in climate have ben linked to war in Ancient China

I don't know what the criteria is for "civil" conflict since they say half the cases they examined involved more than 1000 deaths each - that doesn't sound very "civil" to me! :/

Here's an article from Scientific American in 2009 suggesting the war in Darfur is linked to climate change - teh question itself apparently dates back to 2007.

I don't see anything surprising in any of this - pressure on populations will result in change - and change can often lead to conflict - whether "civil" or otherwise.

Originally posted by adeclerk
I'd guess it has something to do with natural disasters causing a lot of stress on citizens, destroying homes and infrastructure, etc. Hard times usually precede conflict.

True. Your guess is as good as anyones, and apparently as good as the scientists referred to in the article as well.

Why you would try to blame HAARP or some kind of "geo-engineering" for this

I didn't.

I thought this news might be of interest to conspiracy theorists that work with the subject this subforum is based on. I could easily be wrong about that and made the honest mistake of misinterpreting the ramifications of the study's findings.

reply to post by Aloysius the Gaul


Thanks for the references! And I agree with your sentiments.

Even if it is a stretch for anyone to link this to HAARP/Chemtrails, it is still interesting news. In the case of this study, it is still a bit different than darfur.

As one article puts it:

This conclusion — that fluctuations in climate can contribute to violence in modern societies — is a controversial proposal. In this case, the researchers admit they have yet to untangle the mechanisms that link a change in sea surface temperature with, for example, a guerilla war.

Source